Senators want to ban teens from chatting with AI

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In the latest episode of “Congress vs. The Machines,” Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) have teamed up for a bipartisan crusade against chatbots that might be getting a little too chatty with kids. 

Their newly proposed GUARD Act would make it illegal for anyone under 18 to access AI chatbots, forcing companies to play digital bouncer and check users’ IDs before letting them in.

According to a report from NBC News, the bill arrives just weeks after parents and child-safety advocates descended on Capitol Hill, warning that AI bots might be having unhealthy or inappropriate conversations with minors. 

Under the GUARD Act, companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic would need to verify users’ ages through government-issued IDs or “reasonable” alternatives, which, let’s be real, sounds like it could mean face scans or some other mildly dystopian verification system.

The legislation doesn’t stop there. Chatbots would also be legally required to remind users every 30 minutes that they are, in fact, not human. 

The bill also takes aim at bots that could generate explicit material or promote self-harm, making it a criminal offense to expose minors to those types of responses.

Senator Blumenthal, who’s made AI regulation one of his calling cards, didn’t mince words. 

“Big Tech has betrayed any claim that we should trust companies to do the right thing on their own,” he said in a statement to The Verge. 

“Our legislation imposes strict safeguards against exploitative or manipulative AI, backed by tough enforcement with criminal and civil penalties.”

While supporters argue that the bill is a much-needed safeguard for kids in the AI age, critics are already raising eyebrows about privacy concerns and the feasibility of ID checks on massive chat platforms. 

For now, though, the GUARD Act plants another flag in Washington’s increasingly crowded effort to rein in AI, one chatbot pop-up at a time.